BOXING AND BOXERS

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1934, Page 4

BOXING AND BOXERS

THE SPORT IN ENGLAND. HARVEY-PETERSEN THRILL. (From ■ Our Own Correspondent.) London, Nov. 30. All the excitement in the boxing world this week, of course, centres in one thing —the encounter between Len Harvey, the Cornish cruiser champion, and Jack Petersen, the Cardiff heavyweight champion (writes Eugene Corri). ' Though this letter will have been despatched before we know the result of that thrilling contest, as it ought most certainly to be, I may mention that opinions ran remarkably even amongst the experts as to which man ought to win. Briefly the odds was on the heavyweight, as usual, but there were many sportsmen who held the view that Harvey’s incomparable defence would enable him to keep clear of an early knock-out, and that, if the fight went more than a few rounds the cruiser-weight ought to win on points as the faster boxer and the more experienced ringcraftsman. It may be worth while just stating these views, so that readers who already know the result may judge how far expert opinion is at all reliable in such matters. But the popular belief that the heavier man must win, with anything like even skill at the game, is not quite justified. If we look back on the annals of boxing, it will be found that it was, more often than not, a cruiserweight who held the heavy-weight belt in the good old days. A man who can hit as hard as a heavy-weight, as Mickey Walker did on his best day, and is more compact and manageable in the ring, can often put up an astonishingly good fight against what looks like heavy odds of weight and reach. Moreover, some boxjng experts argue that a very big man, by having to hit more or less downwards, loses the extra stingo that a small man, hitting slightly upwards, “with the floor behind him,” can get into his punche... That phrase, “with the floor behind him,” is important. All too few modern boxers understandWhe science of so hitting that they deliver their blows with the full weight of their body, firmly poised on the ground, and with every muscle lending its additional vim to the impact. Harvey’s county celebrity, Bob Fitzsimmons, was one of the finest exponents we ever had of this sort of catapulting from the floor upwards.